Vacationing – The Sequel
By Gerry Meyer
October 1997

Due to the overwhelming response I received to my article last year (1996) about our vacation, I decided to listen to both people and write about this year’s trip.

PLANNING

As an accountant, I think that one of the most important things, and often the most enjoyable aspect of a vacation trip is the planning, especially when it involves multiple destinations. In fact, my wife, Joanie says that I plan our travels right down to where we will stop for coffee and where we will stop for bathroom breaks. This of course is a gross exaggeration. I never plan for bathroom breaks! Unfortunately, they happen, and challenge a tight schedule. I find the most effective means of dealing with them is to ignore the first request to find a bathroom. If the requests continue, I wait until the offending party sits with her legs tightly crossed and her eyes begin to bug. I then immediately find a gas station 40 kilometres down the road. I find this reduces the frequency of these requests, and significantly shortens the stop, since the person now runs rather than walks to the bathroom. Of course, if I have had one too many coffees with my breakfast, I try to respond immediately to the first request for a pit stop.

As I said, planning a trip can be quite enjoyable, and this year was a bonus. Last year we decided that this year we would go to Banff and Jasper. Our friends, the Punnetts, (not their real names because I don’t wan to use the Norgrens’ actual name), asked to go along. We actually have other friends too, who we’ll call the Norgrens. They decided that they would be going there as well.

Early this year, I began planning the trip. Once this was done, the Punnetts found that they had a family wedding on the day we were to leave so they would have to meet us after a few days. This required re-working the plans, finding rendezvous places, etc.

Once the new plans were in place, the Norgrens discovered that they could not rent a trailer for the same time period and would be going on their own. No problem, just a few changes were necessary, maybe eliminate a coffee stop here or there.

As the time approached, the Punnetts decided they would not be coming either. We were now out of friends and this required major work, since the Punnetts drink a lot of water and would need to stop more frequently than I would normally.

Once these plans were in place, my sister and brother-in-law decided they would come along. Since they have never been to Waterton National Park, I worked this into the schedule. Two weeks before we left, they baled out too. Back to the drawing board, eliminate Waterton, add a day to Banff, etc. It’s not often you get to plan six times for one trip.

THE TRIP

The trip itself went smoothly, although next year I will try to keep Joanie from drinking that second cup of coffee before we travel. We arrived at Mt. Robson almost on schedule and scooped up the last camping spot available. We then could relax and enjoy watching others drive endlessly around the campgrounds.

Mt. Robson was ideal for being re-introduced to true nature and observing wildlife up close. We got to know the habits of the mosquito very well, and I discovered that they preferred Joanie’s blood to mine, so if we sat side by side, in-coming armies would soon ignore me.

From Robson we proceeded to Whistlers campground in Jasper. This is a popular place, so we got up at 5:30AM and drove to Jasper to wait in line for a spot. We joined the line up of camping vehicles and I decided to walk to the booth to see what the situation was. It turned out that the actual line for camping spots was the row of people waiting by the booth. An American sitting in his huge motorhome in front of us also discovered this when his vehicle finally made it to the front of the line, only to discover that he had to stand in our line if he wanted a spot. He grumbled loudly about how absurd this was, and how some of us who were behind him were now ahead of him. Seems that Americans don’t like early mornings much. I felt a tinge of guilt as I watched him pass me to the back of the line, but soon felt much better when I got my spot and we could leave for breakfast. I saw him still in the line up about an hour later. By then it was warning up and I am sure he was in a much better mood.

Jasper was very warm, with temperatures in the 30’s the first four days. This seemed like an ideal time to teach our children the joys of hiking into alpine meadows, and across treeless meadows to beautiful, though bug infested moraine lakes. Just to keep them on their toes, it’s also good to remind them that they are in bear country and you can run faster than they can.

Speaking of bears, we did see two black bears and a grizzly bear the first three days of the trip and loaded up on Kodak film. I thought I would start a photo album just on bears. Things took a down-turn when the last bear we saw was lying dead in the middle of the highway. Other than two mountain goats, a small band of roving bighorn sheep and three million elk, our wildlife viewing soon came to an end.

Banff was a big disappointment. Old motels and quaint little shops have been replaced by fancy hotels and shopping malls. We like to play a little game in Banff called “find the English speaking Canadian tourist”. I won, having spotted three groups in one day. Actually, one group had a distinct British accent, but don’t tell anyone. The most common language heard, that I could recognize anyway, was German and Dutch.

Because of the fences along the highway and disease-infected elk population which has decimated the moose and beaver population, wildlife is pretty much confined to the town site. Each day, groups of them would leave our campground for town, spending the day “hanging out” on street corners, bars, etc.

The Tyrell Museum in Drumheller is world famous and a very interesting place to spend a day. I do have a bone to pick though. The hoo doos we visited were less than awesome, and were confined to a small area along the side of the highway.

Drumheller was also the first place we promised our children that we would have a pool for them to swim in. Naturally, our arrival there also coincided with the arrival of monsoon winds and rain. At one point, I must have become delirious, and when I recovered, I found myself right in the middle of the swimming pool. The water was nice, but some tough decisions had to be made. Do I get out of the pool and risk hypothermia or stay in the pool and hope that the weather changes before nightfall? I had little confidence in the weather.

The thing I hate the most is having some local say how hot it has been up until today and how nice it is to have some rain to cools things off. Not while I am here!

From Drumheller we made a pit stop at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, near Fort McLeod. It seems a striking contrast to go from a national park where the preservation of wildlife is a priority, to a site where we celebrate the fact that a bunch of buffaloes are run over a cliff to their death. Nevertheless, it was a place worth visiting, even if it was a little morbid. Joanie even bought a T-shirt with a bunch of unsuspecting bison running along only seconds before their big heads would be pulverized just beyond the left breast.

When we arrived in Radium, we heard about how nice the weather had been and how this was the first rain in quite a while. One woman in the hot springs pool even thought the rain looked a little like fine snow flakes earlier in the day. By now we were getting used to swimming in the rain.

We arrived home on August 19. The next day we talked to family members who told us how nice the weather had been while we were gone, and that today was the first rain in 42 days! Ahhhhhh!!!!

HELPFUL TRAVEL TIPS
Finally, each trip is a learning experience, and I thought I would end by sharing a few tips I have learned…

1. Planning your trip financially is very important. Avoid using the plastic card or you may face a surcharge for the extra paper required to list all the entries on your next bill. We planned very carefully so that we would pay cash for everything and not come home to any surprises. This was so successful, that we went three full days before the first charge was made. (The charge beat me home and was on my VISA statement which arrived home before we did!)
2. If you have spent a lot of money fixing your vehicle before your trip, inevitably, some time during the first week of the trip, someone will ask you about a strange noise they hear. Ignore them. If they bring it up again, deny hearing anything. Keep this up until the noise becomes too loud or you may be sent to an ear doctor, which plays havoc with your schedule. At this point, try to hold out for another day before seeing about getting it looked at. This serves two purposes; first, if repairs cost less than a few hundred dollars, you will find yourself gladly paying it rather than grumbling about the high cost of labour. Secondly, your delay may result in the bill not showing up on your VISA statement for another month.
3. When sleeping with a whole family in a small enclosure, avoid eating beans or other toxic food. More importantly, make sure your family avoids these foods.
4. Finally, camping with your children is a great bonding experience. We spent each night playing cards. If you play games with you family, make sure you teach them a new game every two or three nights. If your children are fast learners, you may need to change this to every night or two. I learned this lesson the hard way. It took me 14 nights before I discovered that I could break my losing streak by teaching the kids a new game. Immediately I returned to my winning ways.